jack craig &al
> > Do you (or anyone else) know the number of the original
post
> > concerning this? I'm struggling to find it.
>
> In this regard, would some sort of index be helpful?
> I have the same problem when trying to find an old posting.
great idea & it certainly would be helpful
tho it seems a bit like belling the cat
an enormous undertaking
& besides
who is there that would do it
for making a decent index is a time consuming & mostly lost art
but doing it here would be an even more daunting job than usual
for example i recently had occasion to search for alflga
thanx to our ridiculous bp search engine
it took me over 20 separate dips to reach back to message 1
& i got a total of 16 hits
but most of them required still more careful scrutiny
before proving to be marginal or irrelevant to my own interest
& that doesnt even take into account any well meaning but
nonstandard abbrevs like algafl flalga alagafla flalagaflla etc etc
or nonabbreviated mentions
so anyway i could post these fruits of my play somewhere
& maybe i should for starters
since alflga is alphabetically first by one reckoning
& in case this leads us anywhere
927 1340 1498 2396 2398 2400 2401 2402 3605 3606 3607
3608 3609 3612 8456 8462
but note that this list is still completely unannotated
& it leaves anyone else who is interested in this topic almost
completely in the dark anyway
not to mention if they were interested next in any of the other 84
american multipoints
or the 161 world class multipoints
etc etc
or yikes what about common offpoint topics
like just ordinary borders
or claves
or prawns
or perfectly topical topics that are not normally coded
like say references to your book or any other source materials
etc etc
on the other hand
a simple & nonexhaustive list of any particularly useful or
seminal messages might be more easily compiled
but that would still require revisiting all the many thousands of
messages just to ferret out even only the best of these
or we could make a random collection by everyone just adding
the results of their own searches whenever it occurs to them
but that would be raggedy too
& still very much hit or miss at best
however
i do believe the present almost impossible reality isnt really so
bad at all for such devoted seekers as ourselves
who thrive on almost impossible challenges anyway
indeed it seems to me that bp as it is presently constituted by
cosmic happenchance actually mimics very well the reality of
trypointing on the ground
especially for those who prefer to deliberately handicap
themselves anyway for that extra challenge & reward
by going for example without maps or gps or compass or on
moonless nights etc
so in a nutshell
having spent years wishing for the perfect data hub myself
i now believe that wishing things were easier or trying to make
them easier
even if it were possible to do so
may actually run counter to deriving the greatest possible
satisfaction in this our already truly awesome game
of search & enjoy